


Pinky Promises; or, MOM, Holy FUCK

by youreyestheyglow



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon-Typical Gore, M/M, Mary's alive, Porn, The porn has nothing to do with Mary, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-22 09:40:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22747612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youreyestheyglow/pseuds/youreyestheyglow
Summary: There's a couple times in the book where Neil wonders what Mary would do if she could see him. Well: The Sunday after Riko dies, she turns up on his doorstep.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 100
Kudos: 953





	1. Chapter 1

_“Go, go, go!” Mary hisses, just at Alex’s back. “Go!”_

_Alex looks behind him in time to see her whirl, gun in hand, and time stops._

_There’s a moment, just a split second, where he could have stopped. Turned on a dime. Grabbed her shirt, hauled her back into the car, recognizable and followable but at least fast, at least that._

_But, just like every time, Alex isn’t fast enough._

_He goes first. His job is to get into the driver’s seat, get the car started, so that Mary can hop in the passenger side and Alex can hit the gas. That’s how things go, on these getaways. And she’s beaten that into him. He knows his job._

_He jumps into the driver’s seat. Starts the car._

_Looks out the window._

_Sees, in slow motion, Mary stumble. A burst of blood on her stomach. Sees her look up, at him, still yelling at him to go. Go. Go._

_She keels sideways into a wall, and there are people moving behind her._

_Go. Go. Go. Go. She says his name,_ Nathaniel _, and it’s enough to get him moving. Enough to make him slam on the gas. Enough to make him shoot out of the alleyway where they’d planned to ditch the car, three gunshots ring out behind him, to make a wild left, Mary only had one bullet left in her gun, and then right, she’s dead and dead and there’s no going back now, no idea where he’s going—it’s a miracle, he realizes later, that he didn’t get pulled over—and Mary is dead, he drives, his mother is dead, until his gas tank is on E, Mary is dead, until the car trundles to a stop on a beach in California._

_She’s dead._

_His mother is dead._

_His heart rate slows, for the first time in hours, and he realizes—he’s sitting in it. Sitting where she’d been sitting, before they stopped to abandon the car, sitting where she’d already been bleeding like a stuck pig—two towels over the seat, so that she wouldn’t leave any blood in the car, but as Alex uncurls his hands from the steering wheel he realizes it wasn’t enough. There’s blood on his hands, under his fingernails, and he feels it, dried on his shirt, into his pants. He peels himself off the vinyl seat, and the sound almost makes him vomit, but he can’t, not yet, he shoves it down, shoves it all down, grabs his duffel and runs down to the water. Maybe there are sharks, looking for blood—_ sharks don’t like how humans taste, says some part of his brain, some part of his brain that listens to someone who donates to charities— _and maybe they’ll come get him, and he won’t have to think about what to do next, but they don’t, and the sand scrubs away half of Alex’s skin and all of the blood, and the salt water makes his shirt dry weird but at least it’s not bloody._

_He dumps all their extra gasoline on and in the car, and lights it on fire._

_He takes out his wallet. The driver’s license in it says Alex Gardoba. He tosses the ID into the car, where it lights up immediately. It’s fine. That’s the only thing that’s fine. They’d just gotten new names, two days ago, before Nathan caught up with them, before they started running again, too fast and too far to worry about a name change. Alex takes out his new license—this one says he’s 18; it’s easier than being a provisional driver, even if he never drives without—well. Now it matters, doesn’t it. From now on, he'll be driving without his mother in the car._

_Alex squeezes that down. Pushes it down. Not yet._

_The license says Neil Josten._

_It’s a shame. He was just starting to get used to Alex._

_Neil puts the license in the designated slot in his wallet._

_The face on the license twists. Changes. Auburn hair and blue eyes and—_

Neil Josten wakes up breathless, gasping. There’s a hand around his arm, and for an awful second, it feels skeletal, his mom’s hand, grabbing him from beyond the grave, and then it’s over. Neil grasps at the hand—Andrew’s hand—and hangs onto it, pulling it around him as far as Andrew will let it go, hunting for the right to be alive. For the reminder that if he had gone back, he would have died, too.

Andrew tugs, and Neil goes, rolling over—awkward in the small bed—to face him.

Andrew tugs on the collar of Neil’s shirt, and Neil breathes.

“Sorry I woke you up,” Neil says, quietly.

Andrew’s eyes flash furious, but Neil doesn’t take it back. He’s not the only one who loses sleep over nightmares, and Andrew needs to sleep sometimes.

Also, finals start tomorrow, and they need to be rested.

Well, maybe Andrew doesn’t. But Neil needs to study, and needs to be able to remember things on his tests.

Andrew brushes his fingers through Neil’s hair. An invitation to stay. To go back to sleep.

And then Neil’s alarm goes off.

He smacks at it, and considers going back to bed anyway, but—on Friday, Riko died, and now Neil is _not_ at risk of dying, and therefore, suddenly, needs to do well in school.

So.

He sighs and stands.

Andrew looks up at him. Inviting. Back to bed. Warm sheets, and someone to hold his hand.

Neil dredges up some self-control. This is new, this sudden need to make decisions based on the long-term rather than the short-term, and it’s shockingly annoying. “Gotta study some time, and I didn’t do anything last week.”

“Imagine,” Andrew says, “if you had.”

“I’d still need to study.” He gets changed, easily overriding the urge to change in the bathroom—it’s just Andrew. Andrew’s already seen it all. And when Neil turns around, Andrew is staring at him, dark-eyed and beautiful, and Neil takes that and shoves it down and wanders into the bathroom to brush his teeth. Self-control. Self-control. He has self-control. 

He heads out into the living area, which is currently devoid of people. Neither Kevin nor Nicky are up yet; neither of them skimped on studying as much as Neil did last week, although Neil would have expected Kevin to. And neither of them seem to care so much about their grades, which—Neil finds—suddenly matter to him. Not much. Just—a year ago, he only needed to keep his grades high enough to let him stay on the exy team. Before that, he hadn’t stayed anywhere long enough to _need_ grades.

He sits down at his desk, and wishes he was anywhere but.

There’s a knock on the door.

Neil stands, looking around—did Aaron leave something in here? He only recently moved out. Would he even be up yet? Absolutely not. Would _any_ of the Foxes be up yet? Again, absolutely not.

Well, maybe Renee. But what would she need?

Neil opens the door.

There’s a woman standing there—in her forties, fake-red hair, brown eyes. Smiling.

She sees him, and the expression drops, changes into—

Into—

She looks past him, sees no one, and pushes him inside, shutting the door behind her, silently. “Get your stuff,” she hisses. “And your fucking—are you _out of your mind_?”

Neil feels his heartrate speeding up, and he can’t stop it. Feels, oddly, like he’s dreaming; wonders if, more realistically, he’s dead. Because his mother is dead.

“How could you—I put so much effort into hiding you, and then you do _this_ —” she grabs his hair and pulls, hard enough it almost comes out of his head. Neil knows not to make a sound.

It’s that—the _knowing_ —that convinces him.

He grabs Mary Hatford’s wrist, and she lets go of him.

“ _Go,_ idiot, before—hi!” She says, in a German accent, smile back on her face, waving. Waving in the direction of Neil and Andrew’s room. “Good morning, I hope I didn’t wake you!”

Andrew doesn’t answer. Neil can’t even look at him, not when Mary, Mary Hatford, his mother, who died, who definitely died, _who didn’t die, who didn’t die—_

“Bring your duffel,” she tells Neil, “I want to sneak as much food into the movie theater as we can.”

Neil’s stomach hollows out. His chest caves in.

“Neil.” Andrew. “Who is this?”

“No.”

It takes a minute, during which his mother— _his mother, who is standing here, alive—_ gives him a _look_ , a look that says _you are going to pay for that when we get in the car_ —to realize that the _no_ came from him.

Neil steps back. Wants to grab his phone, but it’s in his right pocket, and his right hand is still holding onto his mother’s wrist, her skin is warm, _alive_ , he can feel her pulse, he can—

“Neil.”

Neil steps back again. Lets go of her wrist. “No. I’m not running.”

Mary rolls her eyes. “If you don’t, we’ll be late for the movie. Don’t tell me you _forgot_? I tell you I’m only in town for a few days, and you’re going to tell me you _forgot_ our—”

Neil stumbles back as Andrew steps in front of him.

“I don’t know who you are,” Andrew says, musingly. He’s dressed, notices a part of Neil’s brain which is detached from the situation, the part of Neil’s brain that notices things. “Which is odd, because Neil doesn’t have family. And I know all of his friends.”

“He didn’t even tell you about me? I guess it makes sense—I’m German, and I don’t get over here very often. But when I do, I like to take my nephew to a good movie, and—”

“No. No. I’m not—” Neil gags, his stomach trying to give up the ghost, trying desperately, but there’s nothing in his stomach.

“Neil, sweetie, why do you room with people who have knives?”

Neil looks up, and sure enough, Andrew has a knife in each hand, “Andrew, she’s got a gun, _Andrew_ —” And that’s enough, enough to make him step forward, to put himself between Andrew and his living, breathing mother, enough to make him force Andrew to step backward. And not enough, he realizes, or too much, because _gun_ is too much and Andrew tries to dart around Neil, but Neil is the fastest _not fast when it matters_ fast enough this time and he twists and pushes Andrew back by the shoulders, “she won’t shoot me, she’s my—my—”

Soft isn’t a word Neil often applies to Andrew, or trusting, but there must be enough truth in Neil’s voice, because Andrew’s knives disappear, and one hand comes up to grab Neil by the chin. To drag Neil’s face around, to look firmly at Andrew. To make Neil look Andrew in the eyes.

“Neil,” says Mary, and it’s cold. A warning. Every instinct, every ounce of muscle memory, tells him to lie, to say something that will make Andrew stand down, to go put his binder in his duffel and walk outside _now_ before they get in trouble before someone else comes before Mary has to shoot their way out he’s going to get hit when they get in the car if he just _goes_ it’ll be—

The door opens.

Not the front door. The other bedroom door.

“Is that a woman’s voice I hear in my male sanctuary?” Nicky says, yawning, and then blinking, confusion written all over his face as he sees Mary. “Who are you?”

“Blocking the _door_ ,” Kevin mumbles. Either he shoves, or just falls, but either way, Nicky stumbles out of the way, and Kevin looks up—

He almost falls over backwards.

Andrew tenses.

The difference between a ten-year-old boy and an 18-year-old man is a lot. Add in color contacts, a dye job, and eight years on the run, and Kevin didn’t recognize Nathaniel Wesninski. But the difference between a 30-year-old woman and a 39-year-old woman is a lot _less,_ and a wig just isn’t enough, not to someone who _knew_ her.

“You said she was _dead_!” Kevin yells.

Mary sees Kevin, and recognizes him—how could she not—and blanches—“Neil, I’m going to _kill you_ —” German— “I _worked so hard to keep you from this and you ran right into his arms I’m going to rip your hair out—_ ”

And then someone kicks the front door open, and Matt, still in his pajama shorts, barrels in, followed by Dan, and Allison, and Renee, and Aaron, and,

“You will do none of those things,” Andrew says, in frigid English. “You won’t touch him.”

“Who?” Matt says, pointing vaguely at Mary.

Andrew, without looking, pokes Neil in the chest. It’s like it dislodges the word, knocks it loose, even in the face of Mary’s glare—

“Mother.”

There’s a pause, and then—

“I thought she was—”

“You said she was dead, didn’t you—”

“Wait, isn’t she—”

“Hang on, this is—”

And then, cutting through it all: “I’m calling Coach.”

Dan’s already got the phone to her ear when Mary’s gun makes an appearance.

Dan stares at it.

“Enough,” Mary says. “Hang up the phone. Neil and I—”

Matt pushes Dan behind him, and Neil crosses the room at top speed to stand in front of Matt.

“Mom, it’s ok. They know.”

He hears Wymack’s voice come out of the phone speaker, made unintelligible by distance.

“Mom. Put the gun down. They know everything. It’s fine.”

Mary stares at him, fury and betrayal in every familiar line of her face, and in a couple unfamiliar ones as well—when did she get those? Did Neil forget about them, or are they new? He reaches out and puts a hand on the pistol and pushes, gently, lowering Mary’s arm.

Wymack’s voice comes out of the phone again, more frantic this time.

Neil, with one last glance at his (living) mother’s face, twists and reaches back around Matt, hand out for the phone.

Dan hands it to him, squeezes his hand so hard he’s worried it’ll break, and then lets go.

“Coach.”

“Neil. You’re not Dan. What’s going on?”

“My mom is here.”

Silence.

“I thought you said she was dead?”

“I thought she was.”

And then Andrew is there, taking the phone from Neil.

“Coach, we’re coming over. Too many people in this dorm.”

Wymack speaks, and then Andrew hangs up. “We’re going to Abby’s for breakfast,” he announces.

“Great, I’ll drive,” Mary says, holding a hand out to Neil. Not the one holding the gun.

Neil shakes his head, bumping into Matt before he realizes he stepped backwards.

“I will,” Andrew says. “We’ll have to take two cars.”

“Anyone else think Andrew shouldn’t be driving her?” Aaron says.

Matt shrugs. “I’m sure as hell not. Doesn’t she have her own goddamn car?”

“Not sure how good an idea that is, either,” Aaron says. He points at Neil. “Person Andrew wants to protect.” He points at Mary. “Abusive mother.”

“Jesus, Aaron,” Nicky says softly.

“Accidents take time to plan,” Andrew says. “You know that.”

“Jesus, Andrew,” Nicky says, a little less softly.

“Okay,” Allison says. “Matt’s taking Dan, Renee, and Nicky. I’m taking Mom Josten, Kevin, and Aaron. Andrew is taking Neil. That gun is not coming in my car.”

“I can drive,” Mary says.

“No, you can’t,” Allison answers. “And the gun—fuck, I don’t even know what to do with that, leave it here?”

“I’m not leaving the gun.”

“I’ll take it,” Neil says. “Andrew won’t crash the damn car, there’s no reason to split them up,” he tells Allison. Although it’s a smart plan; Andrew won’t crash his own car if Neil is in it, he won’t crash into Matt’s car if Nicky is in it, and he _certainly_ won’t crash into the car containing Mary if Kevin and Aaron are also in it.

Allison shrugs. “Buying car insurance doesn’t mean you intend to wrap your car around a tree. It just means that you _might_.”

“No, I have questions,” Andrew says. “She can live.”

“Thanks,” Mary says, death dripping off every letter.

Andrew stares at her.

“Mom, give me the gun.”

Mary looks at Neil, and he can see it, the conflict, her mind racing, _no one else has a gun and it’s a dorm full of sleeping students if I grab him and run we can make it there’s already witnesses but on the other hand we’re probably about to go somewhere more private and easier to run from but I’m not going to have my car but I can steal someone else’s car—_

Neil holds out his hand.

Mary clicks the safety on and hands it over.

Neil stands there, holding it. A familiar weight, with nowhere to put it—he doesn’t have a holster, not anymore, and carrying it around feels odd, given he doesn’t intend to use it. But she won’t let him leave it behind. Neil sighs. “Don’t kill anyone,” he says, to the room at large, and heads back into his bedroom. He pulls out his duffel bag, empties it onto his desk—movement out of the corner of his eye—Andrew stands in the doorway, watching Neil, as he unloads the gun and dumps bullets and the gun into his duffel.

On second thought, Neil grabs a shirt and wraps the bullets in it—Mary doesn’t need to know that the gun is no longer loaded, and no one needs to hear the bullets clink together. He closes the duffel and slings it across his back, and follows Andrew out—to find that the room is just about empty.

Everyone must have gone to get changed, Neil realizes. No one expected to be up this early. He feels a surge of warmth as he thinks about it—his whole family, running in to jump into whatever fight the monsters were having—and then he meets Mary’s ice-cold eyes, and it dissipates.

“You’re going to get us both killed,” she says in French.

“I’ve tried telling him that,” Kevin calls from his bedroom, “ _many_ times.” He comes out fully dressed, alert thanks to adrenaline and little else, and pales a little when he sees Mary, like he’d hoped she’d be somebody else, now that he was a little more awake. “But he never fucking listens.”

Neil shrugs, unrepentant. “You’re welcome.”

Mary says something in Bulgarian, something about languages, maybe?

Neil holds his hands up, an apology. “I didn’t catch any of that. I’m out of practice.”

Mary’s eyelid twitches, and Neil flinches, even from across the room, even after nearly two years, even though he faced down Riko and Tetsuji and Ichirou—

Andrew stands in front of Neil, holding a knife. Not pointed at Neil. Pointed down, at the floor. Looking at Mary. Ready and waiting.

They stand like that, the three of them, while Kevin and Nicky take turns in the bathroom. While Neil studies his mother’s face, alive, masking years worth of fury, masking the urge to grab him and run, masking the urge to pull all the hair out of his skull.

“What happened to your face?” She asks, eventually, in German.

“Riko Moriyama. And then Lola.”

Her hand twitches, squeezing a trigger she isn’t holding anymore, and her legs move—an aborted attempt at walking. “ _I kept you safe for years—_ ”

The door opens, and Matt pokes his head in. “If everyone’s ready? Neil, you’ve got the gun?”

“Allison’s ready already?”

“She decided to forego most of her routine.”

“Really?”

“She says Abby’s seen her way worse.”

Nicky shakes his head. “Allison not doing her hair is _not_ a nice thing,” he tells Neil. “You are _not_ allowed to look like that because she decided not to put on perfume.”

“Oh, she put on perfume,” says Allison’s voice from behind Matt. “She isn’t a barbarian. Is Murder Mom ready to go?”

Mary stares at Neil.

“Yes,” Neil decides. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Allison pushes past Matt so she can look at Mary. “If you try to make me crash my car, I will taze you and stick you in the trunk.”

Mary stares at Allison.

“Good enough,” Allison decides. “Let’s go.”

With one last look at Neil, Mary follows her out.

Neil takes a deep breath and walks through the door, following Andrew straight out of the building and to the Maserati. He gets into the car, closes the door, and pushes his head back into the headrest.

Andrew gets in and shuts the door, but doesn’t move.

Neil puts a hand on his chest, feeling his heart pound. Feeling it slow down. Familiar. The car is familiar. Andrew’s silent presence is familiar. His mom (his living, alive mom) isn’t in his line of sight anymore, and Neil wonders, for a second, if the past twenty minutes were a dream, a nightmare, if maybe he’d been sleeping in the car on the way back from somewhere and he’s not now getting _in_ the car, he’s supposed to get _out_ of the car—

He looks at Andrew.

Andrew is staring at him.

“I thought she was dead,” Neil whispers.

Andrew reaches out and hooks a finger in Neil’s collar. Doesn’t pull on it. Just leaves it there. Taps his thumb against Neil’s throat, where Neil’s pulse is still jumping out of his skin, in spite of his surroundings.

After a moment, Neil calms down. His pulse slows.

Andrew takes his hand back, and Neil buckles his seatbelt.

Matt’s truck pulls up next to them, window down, and Neil rolls his own window down.

“Good to go?” Matt asks.

Neil nods, and realizes Allison’s car is idling behind Matt’s—everyone’s waiting on him. “Sorry.”

Matt waves that off. Andrew starts the car, and hits the button to roll Neil’s window up. They pull out of the parking lot like they’re running from something, and it’s almost a relief—if Neil can’t run, at least he can _move_ , and Andrew’s driving style suddenly makes some kind of sense.

The drive to Abby’s is fast and traffic-free—no one’s out on a Sunday morning—but Andrew still pulls into her driveway thirty seconds before anyone else gets there.

Neil looks at Andrew. “I’m not leaving,” he says. Promises. “And I’m not letting her take me out of your sight.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Andrew says. Promises. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says, and leans across the stick shift to meet Andrew in the middle for a kiss that makes him forget—

The sound of an engine closes in on them, and Andrew pulls away and gets out of the car.

Neil gets out, too, and sees Wymack already standing in the doorway, eyebrows pulling together, arms crossed.

Neil nods at Wymack, and he nods back.

Allison pulls up next, apparently unharmed, followed immediately by Matt.

Wymack stands back, ushering them all inside, giving Mary a cursory glance as the Foxes sweep her through the door. He drops an arm in front of Neil, preventing him from entering the house.

Neil looks at Wymack.

Wymack studies him. “You don’t look very happy.”

Neil waits.

“You thought she was dead. She’s not. But you don’t look very happy.”

“If you wanted a group of normal people, you shouldn’t have built the Foxes,” Neil says.

“Are you doing okay?”

“Mostly.”

“What’s with the duffel?”

“She brought a gun.”

Wymack waits.

“I have it.”

Wymack waits.

Neil shrugs the duffel off, pulls the gun out, and holds it up.

Wymack checks the safety, and then opens up the chamber. He looks at Neil.

Neil holds up the duffel.

Wymack drops the gun in the duffel, and allows Neil and Andrew inside.

“Set the table,” Abby is saying, in the kitchen, pointing at Nicky and Aaron. “Both of you. Kevin, start toasting bread—don’t _give_ me that look. Matt, Dan, chop these. Allison, Renee—take drink orders. Neil.” She gives him a once-over. “New stitches? New wounds?”

Neil shakes his head.

“Good.” She pulls him in, pulls his head to her shoulder, and hugs him, and this close he can hear how shaky her breath is, how _worried_ she was for him. It feels— _wrong_ —to be hugged like this, while his mom is right there, wrong to have never been hugged by his mom before, like he’s _replaced_ her—Abby pulls away, pats Neil’s cheek, and hands him a pack of bacon. “You’re on bacon duty. Andrew.”

Andrew looks at her.

Abby looks around, hunting for something else to do, unwilling to give over the making of eggs, unwilling to even spend any kind of time looking at Mary. “Get more chairs.”

Andrew just stands there.

“I’ll get them,” Kevin says, abandoning the toast and heading into the next room to find the folding chairs.

Andrew takes over for Kevin, standing at the toaster, half an eye on it and the rest of his gaze on Neil. Neil feels it like a balm, like glue, like a weight pinning him down—no—holding him steady. He pulls bacon strips apart and avoids looking at Mary Hatford.

The bacon takes ten minutes, during which the kitchen gets louder—glasses have been filled, the table’s been set, chairs have been brought in, and half the kitchen has nothing to do. Kevin is giving Matt a verbal review from their history class; Allison’s pulled out a deck of cards and is playing something complicated with Renee and Dan, and explaining the rules to Nicky; Aaron is talking to Wymack about their summer schedule; Abby is wielding spatulas and plates like she’s spent her whole life putting enough food on the table for 12; and Mary Hatford is entirely silent, and it’s not like her, she should be saying _something_ , should be getting people on their side, weaseling information out of people who don’t know they have information to give, and she’s _not_ , and Neil looks up and meets Andrew’s gaze, and remembers to breathe, and dumps the last tray of bacon onto a plate, which Abby takes from him before he can even turn around.

There’s two spaces left at the table—Neil sits next to Dan, and Andrew sits next to Neil, and Abby is next to Andrew, and Mary is next to Abby at the head of the table. Dan wraps an arm around Neil’s shoulders and squeezes, protective, contained.

The distributing of food is a loud process—it would make sense, sure, if plates were passed around from one person to the next, but that’s not how it works. Neil takes food as it makes its way in front of him, and Andrew takes nothing, and Mary takes a piece of toast and a scoop of eggs to fit in, because taking nothing would be worse.

And when everyone’s got food, Wymack looks at Neil. “Talk. I thought she was dead.”

“Me too,” Neil says, looking at Mary. “Why aren’t you?”

“That’s a ridiculous question. Why would I—”

“I watched you get shot. I heard three gunshots—you only had one bullet left, someone else was shooting, you should be _dead_.”

Mary’s gaze is daggers. It takes every ounce of spine Neil’s built over the past year to stand up to it.

“Is anyone else coming back?” Aaron asks. “Anyone else we should know about? Your dad?”

Neil shakes his head. “I _did_ watch him die. No way to survive a—”

“Nathan is dead?” Mary asks. Hopeful. Resentful. Quiet.

Neil stares at her. “Since March. Didn’t Uncle Stuart tell you?”

“I haven’t spoken to him. Nathan is really dead?” And she’s smiling, smiling, people forget that his mother is from a family of gangsters too—“Get that look off your face,” she snarls, and then Andrew slams a hand down on Neil’s wrist to stop him lifting his hand, to stop him from clawing his father’s smile off his _face_ , “It’s bad enough that you’ve got his hair and his eyes and his—"

“Stop it,” Andrew says, and whether he’s talking to Neil or to Mary is up for debate but Mary stops talking and Matt says—

“Oh, wow, is that why you just about puked whenever you saw your reflection? After Christmas?”

Neil looks at him, and can’t even think about it, and looks back at Mary. “How did you find me? If you haven’t spoken to Uncle Stuart?”

“I was in Switzerland, and I went to a bar and looked up, and, there, on the TV, your face, on _camera_ , with the words _Possible Future Court Player_ on the screen, and I booked a flight.”

“It took you that long to find him?” Dan asks, surprised. “He’s been all over exy news sites since September.”

“I didn’t check exy news sites, _since he was never supposed to pick up a racquet again,_ you don’t even _know_ —” Mary flings a hand out at Kevin, accusatory, and looks at Neil—“how could you ever— _ever_ —get on a court with _him!_ ”

“Because you didn’t tell me!” Neil says, loud, frustrated. “You didn’t tell me who we were running from! If I’d known, I never would have come here—”

“You should be thanking her, then, really,” Wymack says.

Neil looks at him, silenced.

“What were you going to do, Neil? After Millport? If I didn’t sign you?”

Neil flounders for a minute. It’s unexpected. “Run. Somewhere else. Another small town, maybe, where no one would think to check any of my _anything_ , where they wouldn’t have policies in place, address forms—”

“How long could you have kept that up, do you think?”

Neil shrugs. Dan’s arm gains new weight, across his shoulders, a reminder, _you’re here, with us, we’ve got you_. “Given the amount of money I had left? Another few years. Probably.”

“And then what would you have done?”

“I assumed,” Neil says, words burning his tongue, “I’d have been found and killed before that money ran out.”

“And instead, you’re here, and alive, and safe—”

“ _Safe_? I don’t care if Nathan’s dead, you’re not safe as long as Kengo Moriyama—”

“He’s dead, too,” Neil says, and only the weight of Dan’s arm and Andrew’s hand keep him from flinching reflexively as he realizes he interrupted his mother. “How are you this out of the loop? Kengo is dead. Riko Moriyama is dead. Tetsuji is no longer Coach of the Ravens, or even associated with them at all. Kevin, Jean Moreau and I all owe Ichirou Moriyama 80% of our earnings for the rest of our professional exy lives, and if we don’t make pro and Court we’re dead, but—”

“You’re going to be Court,” Kevin says. “There’s no question there.”

Neil waves a hand. “But, that.”

Mary looks like she’s had all the breath knocked out of her. “Why did you tell them? Why do they know all this? They shouldn’t.”

“We already knew about the Moriyamas,” Nicky says. “Kevin told us when he came running to the Foxes.”

“The Butcher should have been a secret,” Mary says, staring holes in Neil’s face.

“He kept it,” Matt says. “All the way until he got kidnapped in March.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t spill it earlier,” Mary says, needling, furious, “or is the girlfriend new?”

The silence around the table isn’t shocked, or loaded—it’s just confused.

“Dad kidnapped me, and what you want to talk about is my _dating life_? Also, what girlfriend?”

“No, wait, I want to talk about your dating life too,” Nicky says. “Your mom was with you every second of every day through your teenage years, and never figured out that you’re gay?”

“I’m not gay.”

“Your boyfriend begs to differ.”

“I don't have a boyfriend, and it’s irrelevant. I don’t look at anyone else differently. It’s just him.”

“Hang on. _Hang_ on. You don’t find _me_ attractive?” Nicky jabs a finger in Neil’s direction. “That’s homophobic.”

“Can we talk about _anything else_?” Aaron asks. “At _all_? Anything? Let’s talk about Neil getting kidnapped.”

Andrew’s hand disappears from Neil’s wrist, which is good, Neil realizes, because he was losing feeling in his hand, but when he looks at Andrew, he understands.

Neil picks up a piece of bacon and holds it out to Andrew. “Are you going to eat anything?”

Andrew looks at it, and looks at Neil, and his eyes are bottomless, rage simmering to the surface, self-control slipping. If Neil ignores it, Andrew will grab Neil and lock the two of them in a bathroom or something until everyone else goes away.

Well, that wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Neil shrugs and takes a bite of the bacon. It’s _good_ , too, and he hadn’t realized how hungry he was—

Andrew grabs the bacon and throws it onto his own plate.

Neil waits.

Dan takes her arm off Neil’s shoulder.

“Are you going to eat that?” Neil asks Andrew. “It’s really good, I don’t want it to go to waste.”

Neil waits.

He reaches for the bacon.

Andrew smacks his hand away, picks up the bacon, and takes a bite. The scathing look he turns on Neil is annoyed, and almost calm. Neil suppresses a smile.

“Was that flirting?” Nicky whispers.

“Yeah, no, I _do_ want to talk about your dating life,” Allison says, at normal volume. “You still haven’t told us when _this_ happened.”

“ _Anything_ else,” Aaron says. “Anyway, Nathan’s guys staged a riot after we won a game, kidnapped Neil, dragged him to Baltimore, and then, like two days later, the FBI brought him to a hotel where we were camped out, Andrew nearly murdered three FBI agents, Neil looked like absolute garbage—”

“FBI?” Mary says, her voice reaching a pitch Neil hadn’t thought it capable of.

“They took me from the house,” Neil says. “I was Uncle Stuart’s getaway ticket.”

“I’ll kill him. I’ll _kill_ him.”

“He didn’t have any choice. I needed medical attention, and he couldn’t get me to a hospital.”

Mary slams a fist down on the table. “You shouldn’t have needed any! You were supposed to go to Switzerland, you should have been in Switzerland!”

“I thought you were dead! I thought you were _dead_ and I _ran_. I still don’t understand—how are you _alive_!”

“We ran to Seattle for a reason! I _knew_ people there, the gunshots you heard were _them_! I sent them to our emergency meeting place after they peeled me off the ground, I told them where it was and sent them there, and you never showed. They spent two weeks searching for the car! We thought you were dead! I spent almost a year relearning how to _walk_ before I could even leave, and then I went to Switzerland and spent _months_ searching—just in case you were _there_ , because searching was better than deciding you were _dead_.”

“You don’t get to take him,” Andrew says.

It stops Mary in her tracks. “What?”

“You don’t get to take him. Away. At all. Ever. He’s in the system. If you take him away, we’ll tell the FBI, and they’ll find him. _If you use a pseudonym to order so much as a coffee, we’ll find you_ ,” he says, crooking his fingers in quotes. “He’s ours.”

“He’s using a pseudonym right now.”

“Neil Josten is my name,” Neil says. “Legally. I have a new social security number and everything.”

“That’s not possible.”

Neil shrugs. “Ichirou said it was.”

“What?”

Neil takes a second, remembering the exact wording: “ _No matter what they call you, you’ll always be a Wesninski at heart._ But he didn’t say I’m _not_ Neil Josten.”

“When did he say that?” Kevin asks.

“After he shot Riko.”

“ _What_?” Dan shrieks, right in his ear. She grabs Matt’s hand.

Neil looks around. Shock, everywhere. Looks at Kevin. “You didn’t tell them?”

“You haven’t given me any time!”

“I told you yesterday morning. You had all day.”

“ _You_ could have told them!”

Neil shrugs.

“How do you know?” Allison asks.

“I was there. After the game,” he elaborates, responding to the question on her face, “when I disappeared? One of Ichirou’s men came to get me. He brought me into the East Tower. And then Ichirou shot Riko in the head, and framed him for suicide.”

Mary’s chair screeches across the tile as she gets up and walks away.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Nicky says. “Holy _shit_! Why were you there for that?”

“I’m the one who told him Riko needed to go.”

“You did _what_?” Mary says, screeching as loud as her chair as she comes back in.

“Well, I didn’t say it like _that_ ,” Neil says defensively.

Aaron snorts.

“When did you _tell_ him _that_?” Kevin asks.

“It was when Ichirou stopped by to discuss our, uh, future.”

“You mean, whether or not you got to live,” Nicky says, helpfully.

Neil waves that off. “Anyway, he wasn’t happy that I wasn’t playing for Tetsuji, so I told him that as my father’s son I wouldn’t betray him that way—”

“Didn’t know any better,” Allison helpfully supplies.

Renee nudges her.

“Because Riko was going to bring down everything Kengo had built.”

“And then there was the interview,” Matt says gleefully, “where you said Tetsuji should resign.”

“That, too.”

Mary spins away from them. Spins back. “I left you to your own devices for fewer than _two years_ —”

“And got Riko and Tetsuji off our backs,” Wymack interrupts, counting off on his fingers, “removed the threat of Ichirou, saved Kevin, saved _himself,_ and found himself a family. Pretty good for the work of a year and a half, if you ask me, and it’s not a reason to yell at him.”

Mary blinks at him, for half a second, and then erupts. “He’s _my son,_ and I kept him alive for _years_ in the face of threats you have _never_ —”

Neil stands.

It takes him a second to realize he’s standing up, and a second longer to realize that that’s why Wymack and Mary have stopped arguing.

He turns and walks out, deeper into the house, until he finds an empty bedroom.

Andrew shuts the door behind them and locks it.

Neil paces, frantically, for twenty seconds, and then sits on the bed. Andrew sits next to him.

“Running,” Andrew says.

“Maybe.” Neil examines his hands. There’s no blood under his fingernails. It feels like there should be. It feels like there never was. “If I’d known she was alive, I’d have gone back to her. If I thought she might have been alive, I’d have gone to Switzerland. The only reason I did _any_ of what I did was because I didn’t _have_ anywhere to go. If I’d known she was alive, I’d still be running.” He traces the key to Nicky’s house into his palm. “I’d never have come here. I’d never have picked up a racquet. I’d never have met you.”

“But she’s alive.”

“But she’s alive,” Neil agrees. “Which means that everything I did was the wrong thing to do.”

“You knew it was the wrong thing to do when you did it,” Andrew says.

Neil looks at him. “You think it was the wrong thing to do.”

Andrew stares at him. “Do you?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“ _Right_ and _wrong_ are subjective concepts.”

“Not really.”

“Sometimes.”

Neil waits. He’s getting good at having patience.

Andrew takes Neil’s hand and presses the back of it into the bed, distractedly. “Do the ends justify the means? If so, then what you did was right. Is obedience to parents, above all, the right thing to do? Then what you did was wrong. Is it more important to do the most good to the most people? Then what you did was right. Is lying the worst sin you can commit? Then what you did was wrong. Was it right or wrong to sign Coach’s contract? Was it right or wrong to go to Evermore? Was it right or wrong to talk to the FBI? That’s on you to decide.”

“What do you think?”

“Are you incapable of forming your own opinion?”

“I like to get all sides of a story before making up my mind.”

Andrew pokes Neil’s fingers, one by one, staring down at them like he’s never seen a hand before. “I think you don’t need to know my opinion.”

“I think that means you think I was right.”

“Did you notice that Coach didn’t list me in the list of people you’ve fixed? Or Aaron, for that matter. Do you think that was because he thinks we’re broken? Or because he thinks that has nothing to do with you?”

“I thought, mostly, that it was because he didn’t want to drag your shit out of the bathroom in front of guests.”

“I thought the phrase was _airing dirty laundry_.”

Neil shrugs. “Irrelevant.”

Andrew drums his fingers against Neil’s hand.

“If you want to hold my hand, you can just do that,” Neil says. He means for it to come out snarky. Pointed. A joke.

It does not.

Andrew flattens his hand against Neil’s. Slowly, like he’s considering, like he’s worried one of his fingers might break. And then. A slight turn of the hand. A curl of the fingers. And Neil curls his own fingers up. And then he’s holding hands with Andrew Minyard.

“You know. If you’d asked me yesterday,” Neil says, as casually as is physically possible—Andrew can probably feel his pulse in his wrist, though; Neil can feel Andrew’s, and it’s racing—“I’d have said my mom would come back from the dead before you’d hold my hand.”

Andrew doesn’t answer, and Neil’s content with that. Content to sit, and feel, and wonder if this is what normal people feel like.

“She did,” Andrew says. 

Neil blinks. “Oh. She did, huh.”

Andrew ignores that, and rightly so.

“You know,” Neil says, slowly, quietly, “When I was younger—and growing up—I started looking at girls. I was curious. My mom saw. She—was not happy. One time she actually caught me kissing a girl, and beat the shit out of me.” He studies Andrew’s knuckles. “I thought—that kiss felt like nothing. I could’ve kissed a wall and gotten more from the experience. And once I got the hint— _girls were off-limits—_ I stopped looking. I thought, for a while, that my mom had beaten it out of me, but I wonder if maybe she didn’t. She beat the _looking_ out of me, but not _it_ , whatever _it_ is. I wonder if _it_ can’t be beaten _out,_ only beaten _down._ But there’s nothing _down_ there. Not for me. Not when I look at Allison, or at Matt, or the Vixens, or the football players. Just you. I don’t swing,” he says, “but I think I’d follow you wherever you go, as long as you’ll let me.”

Andrew doesn’t say anything, and Neil can’t look at him.

“I just thought you should know. Because this started as nothing. I was supposed to die, and you were supposed to move on, but I’m not dead, and this isn’t nothing. Not to me. And, according to Aaron, not to you, either. I just thought you should know where I stand.”

An endless minute passes.

A TV clicks on in the living room.

Maybe Mary left.

Maybe she was never here. A mass hallucination.

Maybe this is a dream.

Neil can’t stop staring at Andrew’s hand.

He probably couldn’t have dreamed this up, actually. He’s not usually this brave, in his dreams.

“Don’t stay stupid shit,” Andrew says, finally. “You were supposed to be a side effect of the fucking drugs.”

Neil looks up at him, lightly offended. “It’s not stupid. And you’ve said the last part before. I’m still not a hallucination.”

“Your mom is out there. You haven’t seen her since you watched her get shot. Don’t you want to go talk to her?”

Neil looks at the door, and knows the answer is supposed to be yes.

But the lock is just so _reassuring_.

“I’m not leaving,” Neil says. “I’m not going with her.”

“Who are you trying to convince? Me, or yourself?”

“You, mostly. You know, I think it would be fun to have cats.”

“What?”

“Cats? Like the animals? I think it would be nice to have some.”

“Cats.”

“Well, maybe not. I live in a dorm.”

“We won’t live in a dorm forever. What kind of cats?”

“Fluffy ones. King Fluffikins.”

“King Fluffikins.”

“King, for short.” Neil looks back at Andrew. “ _We_ won’t live in a dorm forever.”

“We won’t.”

Neil grins, and there it is, the courage he needed to face Mary. “You can pick the other cat’s name,” he says, standing. “Something sensible. John. Is John a sensible name for a cat? Maybe Spot.”

Andrew stares at him.

Their hands hang between them, still connected.

After a minute, he stands. “Sir Fat Cat McCatterson.”

A laugh jumps out of Neil, surprising him. “Sir Fat Cat McCatterson.”

“Sir, for short. _Something sensible._ ”

Andrew drops Neil’s hand as Neil opens the door.

Mary is standing there, waiting for them, looking just as alive as she had before Neil had abandoned her to the Foxes.

“There was no need to run away,” she says.

Neil contemplates that. “I didn’t,” he says, and contradicting his mom is never a good idea, but Andrew is at his back, and he preemptively suppresses the desire to flinch.

Mary twitches.

Neil pushes past her, and Andrew is on his heels, and Neil’s hand is still warm from Andrew’s body heat, and when he walks past the living room the TV shuts off.

“Neil’s alive,” Matt calls, and Foxes pop out of corners.

Neil returns to the kitchen—at least there are enough chairs there for everybody—and finds that Allison, Dan, and Renee have resumed their card game, this time with Nicky involved.

Renee smiles up at Neil, cards pressed to her chest to hide them from Nicky. “Feeling better?”

Neil nods. “Are you winning?”

“Mm. Well, I don’t know what Allison has, but I know that neither Dan nor Nicky have the seven of hearts, so I think so.”

“Do you… need the seven of hearts?”

“Yes.”

Allison takes a card from the deck, flicks a look at the stacks in front of her, and adds it to her hand.

Neil decides that maybe the card game isn’t any of his business.

He _could_ look at Mary. Could talk to her, maybe, about the future, and _his_ future, and what place she wants to have in it, but she doesn’t seem ready for that yet, and he’s not sure how much else he wants to talk about. Instead, he collects dishes, waves Abby off, rolls up his sleeves, and dunks a pan into the sink—

Mary drags his sleeves down, appearing almost out of nowhere, apparently stumped by the fact that the sleeves go only to his wrists, and not to his fingertips—she's used to him wearing baggier clothing. “What are you _doing_? What—when— _what_ —”

“Lola,” Neil says, by way of explanation. He gently pulls his sleeves from her grip, and rolls them up again. “Andrew got me armbands, but I don’t need them here. Everyone’s already seen them.”

For a second, Neil thinks Mary is trying to communicate with him, wordlessly, given Neil has no access to any languages no one else speaks—and then he realizes that he’s horrified her into speechlessness.

Neil sighs and puts down the sponge. He turns and leans against the sink. “Abby, Wymack, and Andrew have all seen me shirtless—actually, I’ve got some new ones, it’s a mess down there—but no one else has, and they’re not trying to. When I got back from Evermore and my face was a wreck, Allison put makeup on me every day, until my face cleared back up. I have new clothes, and they mostly fit me, because Nicky—”

“Hang on,” Nicky says, abandoning his cards, his face working out a range of emotions. “Hang. _On!_ Back in—July? The first time we went to Eden’s! Fuck! Andrew got you clothes—I thought the drugs were fucking with your head,” he says, looking at Andrew, “but you _already_ thought Neil was hot! You were trying to make him _hotter_! You bought him, like, eight different outfits!”

Andrew stares at him, twirling a knife in his left hand.

Nicky scooches his chair backwards, behind Dan.

Neil looks at Andrew. “No, wait, he’s right. Is that why you were buying me clothes?”

Andrew looks at Neil, and his face is blank, but it’s forced. Possibly, no one else had ever paid enough attention to Andrew to notice, but Neil has. “You couldn’t go to Eden’s in the clothes you owned,” he says, flatly. Blankly.

Neil could point out that that’s not a denial. He could say it in German, to keep it hidden from the upperclassmen, but Nicky and Aaron and Mary would understand, and that’s not private enough. So, after a minute, Neil changes the subject.

“When I went to Evermore, Riko gave me back my natural hair color, and informed me that if I dyed it or used color contacts, bad things would—”

“Why did you go to Evermore?” Mary asks. “You keep saying _when you went to Evermore_. You can’t— _cannot_ —tell me that you didn’t figure out, _before_ going there, that the Moriyamas were a problem. I _refuse_ to believe that you are that _stupid_. So why did you _go_?”

Neil looks at her, refuses to look at Andrew, sidesteps 95% of the truth, and says: “Riko asked.”

For the second time, Mary is speechless for a full thirty seconds. “You’re not that stupid.”

Neil shrugs. “I’ve been told I am.”

Mary looks at the Foxes, all studiously ignoring them. Matt’s staring at his phone—there’s no light reflecting on his face; it’s not even on.

“Riko was a threat,” Allison says, not looking up from her cards. “Early in the year, Neil tore him apart on national television. So Riko killed my boyfriend.”

And, oh, there’s the guilt, again. Allison may have forgiven him, but it’s still there.

“I don’t see why that means Neil had to go to Evermore,” Mary says, like she’s talking to a child.

“Not going may have cued Riko to do worse,” Renee says, thoughtfully placing a card in the center deck they’d been picking from. 

“I don’t see why that means Neil had to go to Evermore,” Mary repeats, slower this time, more pointedly.

Allison actually looks up at that, but she doesn’t look at Mary, she looks at Neil. “You make a lot of sense to me, now.” And then she frowns. “No, actually, I take that back. You _made_ a lot of sense, for the first few months, given that I now know your mom, who, _wow_ , can I say? Makes a _lot_ of sense! But the _past_ few months—was that _growth_? Personal growth? Neil, have you _grown_ as a person?”

Neil shrugs.

Allison picks up the card Renee had just put down. Neil tries to match the game to any of the card games he knows, and comes up blank.

“Why,” Mary says, “did you go to Evermore?”

“Allison just told you,” Neil says.

“You’re lying to me.”

“I am not.” Neil grips the edge of the sink. He told Tetsuji Moriyama _no_. He can stand up, surely, to his mother.

“A lie by omission is still a lie.”

“Oh,” Andrew says, something like surprise in his voice. Neil remembers, in sharp relief, telling Andrew the same thing, his first day here. “You _do_ make more sense now.”

“What does that mean?” Mary demands.

Andrew, still looking at Neil, says, “he told me the same thing, the second time we met.”

“And were you lying?”

“If a smile is a lie.”

Mary smacks a fist into the counter. “Tell me,” she demands.

Neil shakes his head. Mary grabs his arm, and he peels her fingers off him, steps away.

“I cannot protect you if you are keeping secrets from me,” she hisses.

Matt stands.

Wymack appears in the doorway.

Mary ignores them.

Neil stares her down. When did he get this tall? Not _tall_ —just, as tall as she is. Tall enough to stare her down. Brave enough to keep his mouth shut. When did his spine get strong enough to hold him up?

“Me,” Andrew says. “He was protecting me.”

Mary’s head snaps around. “You? Who the fuck are _you_ that you’re worth _Evermore_ —”

“Enough,” Neil says, and he doesn’t know if he’s answering the question or telling her to shut up, so he says it again, louder, and he doesn’t know if Mary shuts up because she’s obeying or because she’s about to beat him for his insolence, _disobedience will get him killed, there’s a reason why soldiers obey their officers to the very end—_ “If you can’t be nice to my teammates, this is over,” he says, and, oh, that’s a line in the sand that he’s drawing.

May as well put up a fence, too.

“I chose them,” Neil says, firm. “I chose them over my _life_ , I went through _torture_ for them. They are my family. If you can’t respect this, I’ll book you a ticket to England. Uncle Stuart will be happy to see you.”

Abruptly, Neil’s heart kicks into overdrive. Mary was dead, and now she is alive. He shouldn’t be rewarding her continued life by tossing her out. She saved his life, ran with him, ran _for_ him, and that betrayal is showing up loud and clear in her eyes, and guilt and anger are rising up his throat in equal measure—

“Wait, don’t throw her out,” Nicky says, reappearing from behind Dan, startling Neil and Mary both. “I have _so many_ questions. First: when Andrew got Neil his first outfit, and I handed it over, Neil looked like he’d been handed a bag of gold, and it really did sound like the first time he’d ever said _thank you_ , so what’s up with that?”

Mary twitches.

For a second, Neil wonders if this is it. If she’s going to walk outside and call a cab and leave. But she glances at Neil, and then back at Nicky, and says: “There was no one around to give him gifts.”

“ _You_ were there, though, weren’t you?” Nicky accuses. “Also, what’s with his _wardrobe_? Did you _approve_ that? Couldn’t have insisted that he had something _nice_?”

“ _Nice_ stands out. Bland, baggy, and boring does not.”

Wymack leans against the doorjamb.

“He didn’t talk to me for _weeks_ after Seth died,” Allison says. “Couldn’t have taught him how to own up to his fuckups?”

“Sorry,” Neil says, but Allison waves him off and looks at Mary, who spreads her arms wide.

“I kept him _alive_ ,” Mary says, endless frustration in her voice. “Does that count for _anything_ around here?”

“Sure,” Nicky says, “but what was the _endgame_? I mean. Best case scenario: Nathan dies, and the whole entire Moriyama empire comes down, and the two of you are safe. And then what?”

“That’s not possible,” Mary says.

“Depressing, but fair. But what,” Nicky repeats, “was the endgame? Run until you get caught and murdered? Neil made you seem more… farsighted than that. Was there any plan for ever being _safe_? And what was Neil supposed to do after that? He had a mental breakdown before he walked into Wymack’s apartment. Andrew handed Neil a cell phone and he had an even _bigger_ mental breakdown. And most places don’t have people like us,” Nicky says, gesturing to include all the Foxes, “all fully fucked-up and therefore understanding of fucked-upped-ness. What was Neil supposed to _do_?”

“When you go on the run with your 10-year-old son, who happens to be wanted by an international crime syndicate,” Mary says, “you let me know what your long-term plan is.”

“Okay,” Matt says, “but you know he turned up here with _one duffel bag_ , that’s how much stuff he had when he moved in?”

“I had the same.”

“Why are you wearing that wig?” Aaron asks.

Mary stares at him.

Aaron stares back.

Mary throws a glare at Neil— _this is your fault—_ and reaches up to take it off. She removes the wig cap. “If I’m going to remove a person from a place where people know him,” she says, placing the wig on the table, “then after a few days, when that person is unreachable and has missed appointments and meetings, someone will file a police report. Having red hair, particularly red hair that is obviously fake,” she says, “means that when police go looking for the last person Neil was sighted with, they will either be looking for someone with red hair—which I can remove and dispose of—or they won’t have _any_ descriptors to search for, nothing _useful_ , which means that we can have an entire police force looking for us, and still fly under the radar, as long as Neil is disguised.

“I think it’s my turn to ask a question, now,” she says. “I can’t imagine all the Butcher’s men are dead. What happens if one of them comes looking for Neil?”

The Foxes collectively look at Andrew.

Andrew, tense, hands still, is staring at Neil, eyes blocking out the light.

And then he shrugs, and the movement surprises Neil—Andrew, frozen, seemed oddly breakable, like the movement should have shattered him. “I’ll kill them.”

“You can’t bring a knife to a gun fight.”

Andrew looks at her. “I’ll kill them,” he repeats.

“You can’t move faster than a bullet, either.”

“I will kill them.”

“You didn’t kill me. What if I’d been one of them?”

“Neil didn’t react like you were a threat.”

“Not good enough.”

“Then I’ll get better.”

“We went on Kathy Ferdinand's show in September,” Kevin says, one hand on his throat. “And—”

“You did _what_?” Mary says in a throttled shriek that has Neil taking a step back.

“Kevin said he wouldn’t teach me exy if I didn’t go on the show with him,” Neil says. It’s no defense—possibly, in fact, the worst he could have given—but Kevin saves him.

“I dragged him,” Kevin says, speaking into Mary’s speechless outrage. “I realize, now, just _why_ he didn’t want to go on, but at the time I thought it was stage fright or—well—anyway, Kathy brought Riko onstage. It was after he broke my hand. Riko broke my hand,” Kevin says, correctly interpreting Mary’s raised eyebrows, “because he realized I had become a better striker than he was. But that’s beside the point. It had been nine months since I’d last seen him. Nine months since I’d run away. Andrew had promised me, when I came here, that he would keep me safe, that Riko wouldn’t get anywhere near me, that he would keep me _here_ , and then he had to sit in the front row—”

“It was a group effort,” Dan says, “Andrew had to be held down, and Renee had to sit on him.”

“He had to sit there,” Kevin continues, “and _watch_ , and listen, as Riko—” he cuts a hand downward, sharp, squeezes his scarred hand into a fist. “Neil told Riko to fuck off, essentially. And then we all went backstage. And then Riko came after us. After me, mostly, and Neil pulled him away—”

Kevin is watching Andrew, like it’s taking all Andrew’s strength just for Kevin to speak about Riko. Neil watches Kevin with one eye, and Mary with the other. She never had a habit of hitting him in front of others—someone might look—but it’s easy to hurt a child without others noticing, or without drawing attention. And Neil has already told her that there are no secrets here.

Kevin breathes in, deep, strained. “And then Andrew was there. Between Riko and Neil. And Riko _stopped_. Stopped in his tracks. Neil and I walked away—Neil walked right past him—and Riko didn’t take his eyes off Andrew, not once.” Kevin looks at Mary, and flinches away—her anger is cold, deadly, and visible to a man who used to be a boy who had to watch out for burgeoning violence. He looks to the left of Mary’s head as he finishes, “Andrew is good enough. Not, certainly, enough against the whole of the Moriyama empire—but neither are you.”

“Isn’t this irrelevant?” Dan asks, after a moment of silence that feels like the inside of a nailed-shut coffin. “Ichirou said Neil is fine. Neil’s an asset now. Is there anyone who would go against that?”

“People are stupid,” Mary says through her teeth, “and loyalty is a drug.”

“Cheerful,” Allison says.

“But realistic,” Renee says. She looks at Mary. “If someone comes for Neil, we will kill him.”

“That is,” Wymack breaks in, “premeditated murder.”

Andrew and Renee look at him.

“Also, killing someone is harder than most people think,” Mary says.

Andrew and Renee look at her.

They look at each other.

Renee smiles, and looks back at Mary. “We know,” she says simply.

Mary waves a hand at Neil, a deceptively carefree motion that Neil follows with both eyes, waiting for it to snap, but it doesn’t. “You didn’t want to stay with Stuart because he was a gangster, and then you went and made a bunch of murderer friends?”

“I think _murderer_ is a little harsh,” Nicky says.

“It’s legally correct,” Renee says.

“And also just regularly correct,” Aaron adds. “But I _would_ like to say that only the two of them are murderers. The rest of us are just regular jackasses.”

Neil shrugs. Mary isn’t wrong. Neil’s distaste just happened to stem more from the fact that Stuart was old enough to be his father than from the fact that Stuart had killed people. So, after all, had Neil.

“Is Uncle Stuart old enough to be Neil’s father?” Wymack asks.

“Oh,” Mary says.

Neil feels oddly stripped down.

“Why do these people know you so well?” Mary asks.

The room gives a collective snort.

“We put in,” Nicky says, “ _so much effort._ Do you know your son had never seen a Disney movie until I got my hands on him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how long it took us to figure out that his favorite color is grey?”

“I do not.”

“A long time! Do you know how long it took us to teach him how to play video games? He’d never played one! What did you _do_ while you were out there? Watch grass grow until a threat popped up?”

Mary chooses not to respond to that.

“Video games—”

“Weren’t exactly necessary to survival, I know,” Nicky says, waving Neil’s interruption aside. “Still, couldn’t you have—”

“I think you forget,” Mary says, ice in her voice and ice in her eyes, “that I also did not have a life. I also didn’t see any Disney movies, or play video games. I didn’t decide that Neil wasn’t allowed to have what you would consider a full life. I had two choices: Give my son over to the yakuza and watch him be tortured from afar—” she looks at Kevin, the new tattoo on his cheek, the scar on his hand—“or watch my husband kill my child. I ran. Nathan and Kengo didn’t exactly send letters letting me know when we could take a week off to go see some movies and purchase a fucking playstation.”

A feeling chews away the inside of Neil’s stomach. Guilt? Is this more guilt? Maybe that was the worst result of his childhood—he’d gotten absolutely no experience dealing with guilt, or with other people at all, really.

“We’re off-topic,” Mary snaps, once the silence has gone on a little too long. “I want to know what the fuck is going to happen when someone comes hunting for the Butcher’s son.”

“I don’t really care,” Neil says, surprising himself a little.

“You _are_ going to explain what you mean by that, _Neil_ ,” Mary says.

“I… the FBI is hunting down pretty much everyone who survived the shootout in March, and none of Ichirou’s people are likely to come hunting me. I don’t want to…” He gestures vaguely at Andrew. “I don’t want you to be a bodyguard. And I don’t want the rest of you to be my personal platoon of lookouts, or whatever. You’re my family, and I just…”

“Just isn’t _enough_ ,” Mary says, imploring, and _imploring_ isn’t a sound he’s ever heard in her voice. “You can’t just—wish away the people who worked for Nathan. They’re _still there,_ no matter how much you want them not to be.”

“What else am I supposed to _do_?” Neil asks, frustration seeping into his voice. “Never leave the dorm? Install security cameras ten miles out? Build myself a fortress and sit in it and hope they all die before I do? I’ve been doing stupid, _stupid_ shit all year long, and it’s been one of the best years of my life, and the first one where I remember being _happy_. I’m not going to force all my friends to pledge to protect me, just in case someone comes for me when I’m not alone. I can’t run, I’ll have the FBI and Ichirou on me, and there’s no way to escape the both of them, so—here I am! If someone wants me, here I am! You didn’t even have to do any goddamn work to find me—someone in the loop, who knows what’s going on, who has access to money and people, will be able to find me in two seconds flat, and I don’t have a choice about that. So I’ll live with that, and I’ll _live_ , just like people live with the knowledge that lightning strikes happen and that stairs can be dangerous.”

“A hit man is not a _lightning strike_ ,” Mary snaps. “And you will never be able to just _live_ with the fucking yakuza.”

Neil exerts every ounce of power he has over himself, and keeps his mouth shut. They’ll just go in circles for hours if he keeps talking.

“Are you giving me the _silent treatment_?” Mary asks, annoyance in every syllable.

“I’ve explained myself. I don’t have any other explanations to give, and I’m not going to argue with you.”

Nicky mimes falling out of his chair. Matt laughs outright.

“You’re not?” Allison asks. “That’s new.”

“I’m going to live,” Neil says, “the way I need to live. If that’s unacceptable to you, then leave. But if it’s not. If you can deal with that. If you can live with that, then stay.”

He watches Mary.

Mary scrubs at her eyes. It’s an oddly unfamiliar gesture. Neil doesn’t ever remember Mary making it. Exhaustion always showed in the bags under her eyes; it was never something she _gave in_ to.

She sighs. “You didn’t give up any of my contacts. I made it here just fine, they got me on the plane and through security.”

Neil shakes his head. “You can keep hiding,” he says distantly.

“Do you have a phone?”

Neil holds it out.

“Do you _not_?” Dan asks.

“Why would I need one?” Mary asks.

“Because people have this tendency to try to kill you,” Andrew says, right on cue.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Nicky says. “Neil is _just like you_.”

Mary flips the phone open and dials a number, one she knows by heart, and holds the phone to her ear.

A male voice answers, and Neil can’t quite make out who it is.

“It’s Mary,” Mary says, and then she holds the phone away from her ear while someone yells. “Shut up. Stu. Shut up. I didn’t know everyone thought I was dead, or I’d have informed you I was not. I _did_ think Nathaniel was dead, and yet, I’m standing here in a kitchen with him and his whole entire exy team. Yes, I’m alive. I have been alive for my entire life. I’m not coming home. I’m staying here. I need you to tell Ichirou this, and then let me know what, precisely, I have to do to make that happen.”

Stuart talks.

He talks for five minutes.

Neil can’t pick out exact words, but he hears the tone, and he can guess: Things would be much easier if Mary Hatford would go home to her family. If she stays in America, she’s out of their reach, and out of their jurisdiction, and in Ichirou’s jurisdiction, which is only barely beginning to settle down. She’s with Neil, whose position in the world is precarious at best, and which would be unhelped by the arrival of his mother. 

Mary is stone, unmoving, uncaring, and eventually, bored. “If Ichirou insists,” she says, talking over Stuart, “then I will go home. However, I am open to negotiation.”

Stuart talks some more. Neil guesses—it’s unsafe for Mary, more unsafe for her than for Neil. Neil was just a kid when he was, essentially, kidnapped; given his head, he went right back to where he was expected to be, albeit unwittingly. Mary was an adult. She made her choices. She should go home, let Stuart bring her back into the fold, let him change her name, and fly under the radar. Safe.

Safe, and alive, but not what she needs or wants, and isn’t that exactly the argument that Neil just made? He twists it around in his head, tries to go back, back nine years, to say to his mother: _I’ll make the cut. Just stay. You’ll be safe, and alive, and not dead, and that’s what matters_.

But it wasn’t what mattered. Clearly.

Guilt, and gratitude, and more guilt, and Neil feels unmoored, confused, desperately confused, it’s not even _noon_.

He looks at Andrew, and that’s safe, and it’s easy, and he ignores the sound of Stuart’s voice trying to persuade Mary to do what she wanted Neil to do, and studies Andrew’s face instead.

And then Mary slaps the phone shut. She holds it out for Neil. “You two,” she says, pointing at Neil and Andrew, “we’re going to talk.”

“What did Uncle Stuart say?” Neil asks.

“Not much. He’ll do what he can. Let’s go. Pick a room, because we’re going to sit in it.”

“Why?”

“I could talk to you alone, sweet child of mine. Thoughts?”

Andrew turns towards the doorway and waits.

Wymack steps out of the way.

Andrew walks past him into the hallway.

Neil follows, and Wymack puts an arm out.

“Okay?”

Neil nods. “Sorry for taking up your whole morning.”

“Don’t, Neil. I’m glad you’re okay.” He drops his arm, gives Mary a distrustful look, and lets them follow Andrew.

They head back into the bedroom they’d used before, and Mary shuts the door behind them.

“Shirt,” she says, and Neil obediently removes it.

She stares grimly at his torso, at the new scars, the ones that only count as scars because they’re not scabbed over anymore, the ones that only recently lost their stitches.

She closes her eyes.

Neil realizes, with something akin to panic, that she might be about to cry.

He’s never seen her do that before.

“Well,” she says, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes, “at least someone was here to patch you up.”

Neil puts his shirt back on. “They were. Every time.”

She opens her eyes and looks at him. “I thought you were dead.”

Neil waits.

“I tried so hard— _so fucking hard_ —and I couldn’t even get you to adulthood. I thought, maybe, I should have let you try out, do you know about that? You were supposed to be one of Tetsuji’s—”

“Kevin told me.”

“I’ve spent the past 20 months thinking that, if I’d let you, you might have passed that second day, might have been fucked up but _alive_ , destroyed but _alive_ , and that that was better than _dead_ , which is what I thought you _were_ , Nathaniel. And instead, I took you. _I killed you_.”

And then she does cry, breaking into sections like a marionette, shoulders crooking forward and hands over her eyes, silent, her shaking shoulders the only indication that something is _wrong_.

Neil looks at Andrew, who stares back, apathetic. Not detached. It’s hard to be detached, possibly, from an emotion so close to the one Andrew himself had felt when Romero had kidnapped Neil in March. 

Neil thinks of Dan, and of Abby, and of Nicky, and steps forward. He pauses at the edge of Mary’s armspan, where he can still lean back, still dodge. And then he doubles down. A smack is not the worst pain he’s ever felt, and there’s no anger in her hands, not right now. He steps forward and puts his arms around Mary, and pulls her face to his shoulder, and wonders what she’s been doing, wandering Switzerland alone for months, searching for a ghost.

After a minute, Mary steps back and turns away, scrubbing roughly at her eyes.

With a deep breath, she turns to face them, and points at Andrew. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Mm. Who’s your boyfriend, and why were you staring at another man for fully five minutes straight back there in the kitchen?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“That other guy thinks you do.”

“We’re a thing,” Andrew says.

“Great. Glad you’re more closed-mouthed than my son, anyway, who can’t keep his goddamn mouth shut.”

Neil ignores that. There’s no anger behind it. Old habits.

“I didn’t think I’d ever have to give you the talk,” Mary says.

“You don’t.”

“Use condoms.”

“ _You don’t._ ”

“Don’t get pregnant.”

“What?”

“Don’t get him pregnant.”

“I—he can’t. What?”

“Look, I didn’t get a guidebook for telling my 19-year-old son what to do with a boyfriend, all right? Most people have this talk a lot younger.”

“It’s fine. Really.”

“And who are you, anyway?” She says, turning to Andrew. “Who have _you_ killed?”

Andrew stares back at her, unimpressed.

Neil considers saying something protective. It seems to be the best way to push Andrew into speaking.

Mary turns back to Neil. “What’s his deal?”

Neil shrugs.

“Why is it that you told your whole goddamn team your life story, but won’t even tell me what’s up with this boy?”

“Not my life.”

Mary pinches the bridge of her nose. “So you met and he what, swept you off your feet with his dashing, chivalrous silence?”

Neil opens his mouth, and then a thought hits him. “Actually, the first time we met—the first time I saw him—he took my breath away.”

A laugh bubbles out of Neil’s chest as Andrew looks at him.

“He did?”

“He hit me in the stomach with a racquet. I almost puked,” Neil says cheerfully.

“Looking back, it was, maybe, not the best way to start a relationship,” Andrew says, detached, “but you were running away.”

“See, you’ve been stopping me from running for a whole year now,” Neil says, and maybe the reminder of that violence should make him flinch, or distress him, or make him worry about the future, but—it doesn’t. He trusts Andrew.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

Neil shrugs—he’ll pick apart Andrew’s issues later—and looks back at his mom, whom he probably shouldn’t have taken his eyes off of anyway.

“I don’t like this,” Mary says.

What would Wymack say? “Noted,” Neil says.

“And what, ignored?”

“No,” Neil says. “I heard it, and I have thought about it, and I have discarded it as irrelevant.”

“Excuse—”

“It is. I’m an adult. You’re not paying for my housing or my food. You’re my mom, and I’m sure you want what’s best for me, and I won’t tell you not to express that, but you don’t have the right to tell me how to live my life, or who to spend my time with. This is non-negotiable.”

“I—”

The last of Neil’s patience evaporates. He can already hear it—she spent years protecting him, she threw away her life for him, she has scars too, and it’s _true_ , and that’s what makes it _hard_ , it’s all _true_ , but— _enough_. “My teammates, my coach, Abby, _every person in this house_ has stood by me, even when I lied, even when I refused to tell them who I was or where I come from, even when my fucking mouth got one of them _killed_ they stood by me." His voice is rising, and maybe he should keep it down, but he might as well strangle himself. "They fought for me and came back for me and picked me up from the airport and patched me up and held me together and saved my life _multiple times_ and supported every stupid, _stupid_ choice I’ve made this year, and I don’t flinch when I look at them. I don’t measure the lengths of their arms to make sure I’m standing far enough away to dodge if they hit me. I don’t cringe when they walk towards me. I don’t take cover when I disagree with them, or when we argue, or when we fight. I don’t have to. If someone’s going to punch me, it’s going to be well-deserved, and I’m going to punch back, and they’re going to expect that, and then it’ll be _done_. It’s been nearly two years since I saw you and you thought I was dead the whole time and the first thing you did was try to rip the hair out of my skull, and if I’d left with you you’d have beaten me bloody as soon as we were in the car, and you don’t _earn_ the right to do that to someone. I was a _child_. I was a child, and I didn’t deserve that, and now I’m an adult, and it’s _over_.”

Mary stares at him.

And then she turns around and walks out.

Neil stands there. Unharmed. Untouched. Staring out into the hallway. At the Foxes, lining the walls, Mary having pushed them out of her way.

And then Andrew shuts the door and locks it. He turns and leans against the door, facing Neil.

“It’s true,” Neil said. “Everything I said. And it needed to be said. And she needed to hear it. I couldn’t just—let her keep trying, and keep brushing her off, and let her keep _needling_ , trying to—I know what she did for me, I know she did it _for_ me, I know she wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t love me, but she can’t just—”

His words crash against Andrew, a wave against a crumbling dam, because Andrew is neither apathetic nor detached, not about this, not about this, not about abuse, not about the act of standing up, not about any of this.

Neil slides down to the floor, back against the bed, and presses his forehead to his knees, and thinks about Andrew spending five months planning, waiting, waiting for the opportunity, and then getting in a car one day and killing his mother for hitting his brother. And about Mary, one day, realizing that the next she would lose her son, leaving an exy game to put together a list of contacts, calling in every favor she had, stealing five million dollars from an inescapable empire, and running, and about the urgency she’d have felt, the desperation, about resentment and love swapping places daily. Thinks about Tilda, graduating from abandonment to neglect to beatings.

Neil hears the sound of a shirt against a door and realizes that Andrew is sliding down to sit on the floor. Keeping watch. Guarding the door. Ensuring that, if nothing else, Neil can have this, can have the time he needs. The time he needs to breathe.

Neil indulges, for a moment, in wishing.

Wishing that he hated his mother—he had, for years he’d hated her, and it would be easy to do it again. Wishing that she hated him. That she had died. That he had known that she was alive. That she had left him with Tetsuji, to live or to die. That she had been someone else. That he had never been born, either to his parents or at all.

He takes a deep breath. Picks his head up. Folds his arms across his knees, and props his chin on his arms, and looks at Andrew.

Andrew looks back.

Neil wonders, for a moment, if he should apologize.

For ruining the day. For dragging all of this up. For dragging Andrew into it, when Andrew couldn’t help but _feel_ in response to it, when Andrew would be dragged into vulnerability and Neil’s pain. For putting Andrew in his mother’s path. 

Andrew watches Neil, and Neil watches Andrew, and Neil sees it happen: sees the moment when Andrew decides his emotions no longer need to sit at the surface. Watches Andrew pull himself back together.

“I’m sorry I can’t help,” Neil murmurs. Are the Foxes still in the hallway? He doesn’t know, but this isn’t for them. He will keep his voice down.

“Help with what?”

Neil waves a couple fingers. “I know this was hard. For you. Kevin and I spend all goddamn day looking to you for strength, and then shit like this happens, and we can’t return the favor. I’m sorry. I wish I could.”

Andrew looks at Neil.

Neil looks back.

“You’re an idiot,” Andrew says, a throwaway line with nothing behind it.

“As long as I’m your idiot, I’ll take it.”

“I hate you.”

“That’s okay.”

Andrew stands up and offers Neil a hand.

Neil takes it, and Andrew pulls him up. For a second, they’re holding hands, faces half a breath apart.

But it’s not fair to use Andrew as a crutch like that, to make kissing Andrew into a mid-mental-breakdown activity. Instead, Neil dips his head to rest his forehead against Andrew’s, comfort obtained and hopefully provided, and then turns to the door. Their hands slide apart—and then catch, Andrew’s pinky hooking around Neil’s. A pinky promise, Neil thinks, although he’s not sure what he’s promising or to whom.

Neil opens the door.

The hallway is empty.

Andrew unhooks his pinky from Neil’s.

They find the Foxes in the kitchen, learning the rules of the card game.

Neil peers out into the hallway; the bathroom door is open. He doesn’t see anyone in the living room.

“She went out front,” Matt says.

Neil’s stomach drops. “No, she didn’t,” he says, ignoring the _she literally did_ look Matt’s sending him in favor of striding to the front door and hauling it open.

“Matt,” he calls, “You’ll have to ride back with us. She took your truck.”

“She _what_?”

And then all the Foxes are at his back, jostling to see what Neil already knows—the truck is gone, and Mary with it. Matt pats all his pockets down, tears over to the coffee table, and then into the kitchen, and then back, phone already open.

“It’s at Fox Tower,” Neil says. “Not missing.”

“How do you know?” Renee asks.

“That’s where her car is. She’s got the keys. They’ll be in your truck, or in your room. She drove herself back and took her car and left.”

Matt swears, colorful and inventive, and storms out of the living room, into the kitchen, and then into the backyard. Dan puts a hand on Neil’s shoulder for a minute, and then follows Matt.

And then Matt has to go ensure his truck is at Fox Tower and safe, so the Foxes thank Abby for breakfast, Abby hugs Neil, and they drive back in silence, upperclassmen in Allison’s car and monsters in Andrew’s.

The truck is there, as Neil had promised, with the keys in the cupholder.

“I’m sorry,” Neil says. Somehow, his life keeps coming back to bite everyone else in the ass.

“I’m going to hug you,” Matt says, and then he does, a tight squeeze that Neil doesn’t know what to do with. “We’re your family. I’m sorry the rest of your family is a bag of dicks.”

And Neil doesn’t know what to do with that, either.


	2. Chapter 2

He doesn’t hear from Mary.

It’s a sign, maybe, of how much Neil has grown, or of how far he’s fallen, that a week in, he opens his phone to call her. He doesn’t have her number. She doesn’t have a phone. Why would she? Who would she call?

Two weeks in, he calls Uncle Stuart.

“I don’t know. She hasn’t contacted you? Look, I spoke to Little Boss, but I’m not sure—I couldn’t exactly tell him how to contact her. He hasn’t spoken to you? Either he’s not looking for her at all, or he knows where she is. Stay safe. Don’t disappoint him.”

Neil looks for her, wherever he goes. That woman he passed in Columbia—was that her? That student in the library looked a little older than Neil would expect. Was that a flash of blonde? Of red? Was that a wig?

He looks for her only when he’s in his favorite haunts—practicing, or at the library, or in the dining hall.

And then he looks for her only outside of those places—when he goes out for a run, or when they go to Columbia, or at Eden’s.

And then, two months in, he stops looking for her at all.

Neil and Andrew had taken to dragging Kevin away from the court for weekends so they could stay in Columbia. Nicky’s house, at first, contained ghosts—but they dragged the rest of the Foxes out, too, or maybe it would be more accurate to say just the upperclassmen and Robin, Neil’s striker, and when they left, they took the ghosts with them.

In late July, Neil and Andrew pull off a complicated maneuver: commandeering the house for a weekend, alone. It requires help—Wymack makes promises he will likely keep; Kevin is armed with a tape of all the news footage covering Riko’s death; Nicky makes promises he will likely forget to keep; Aaron rolls his eyes. The rest of the Foxes promise that Kevin will never be left alone; Matt does, too, which is possibly the only reason why Andrew is willing to leave. Kevin may be safe, now, but old habits die hard.

But they’d managed it.

The house looks different, when they’re alone in it.

Neil sets the keys on the little table in the entranceway as Andrew shuts the door behind them. He carries the groceries into the kitchen, unloading refrigerated things into the fridge. The house is silent, peaceful, and in the absolute nothingness of noise, Neil hears Andrew lock the door—the house is safe, now, too.

They have _time_ , Neil realizes, as he rejoins Andrew in the hallway. Kevin won’t barge in; no one’s going to interrupt them. Neil isn’t sure if he should make full use of that time and spend every last second kissing Andrew, or if all that time—acres of it, stretching endlessly into the future, until Monday—means they _don’t_ have to spend every second making out.

“Yes or no?” Andrew says.

Neil realizes, even as he says _yes_ and leans in, that he’d spent five minutes staring at Andrew, just standing here in the sunlit, empty front hall. And then:

 _Andrew_.

Andrew’s hands on his waist, on his hips. Andrew’s lips on his, Andrew’s tongue on his, Andrew’s hair in his fingers. The sound of Andrew’s breath, panting, loud in the silence. Neil can’t tell which one of them is breathing harder, but the knowledge that Andrew is as breathless as Neil makes it almost impossible to look at Andrew— _too much_ , his addled brain says, _too much—_ but Neil looks anyway, opening his eyes, and sees Andrew’s pupils blown wide, his cheeks flushed, and Neil makes a sound that should be embarrassing, except that Andrew looks like he’s memorizing it, filing it away, and Neil _wants_.

Andrew steps back, and _no_ , but his hand drops to Neil’s, and Andrew pulls Neil towards the stairs—stops on the first stair, next to the thermostat, and thumbs the air conditioner on (that’s why it was silent, no AC, which rushes on, a breeze from a nearby vent touching Neil’s elbow)—and then up the rest of the stairs, to Andrew’s bedroom at the end of the hallway. Neil closes the door behind him (there’s no one in the house) closes the door behind him anyway, just because it makes him feel safer, and turns to face Andrew, who touches the hem of Neil’s shirt.

“Shirt on or off?” Andrew asks.

“Are you sure?” Neil asks.

Andrew doesn’t bother responding.

“Are you sure?” Neil repeats. “A blank face isn’t a yes or a no.”

“Yes,” Andrew says.

Neil pulls his shirt off, hot air on his skin. Andrew’s fingers line up with the divots in his skin where he was hit with the iron, and then slide, torturously, up to Neil’s neck to pull him down for a kiss, hotter than the summer sun. Andrew’s other hand closes around Neil’s hip, pulling Neil closer, Neil’s stomach pressing against the cotton of Andrew’s shirt, and then Andrew is moving him, and the bed bumps against Neil’s thighs. Neil breaks away—a heroic effort that involves him physically pulling his body away from Andrew’s—and almost falls onto the bed, pulling Andrew after him, scooting backwards, rumpling the comforter (Andrew makes his bed when he leaves the house, he doesn’t bother in the dorm, sheets always a mess) and leaning back onto the stack of pillows (Andrew only has one at the dorm, there’s no space, but here there are so many, so many soft clean things in this place where no one but Andrew goes) and Andrew follows him, placing one knee between Neil’s legs, one elbow beside Neil’s head, the other hand tracing scars over Neil’s heaving chest, over his stomach, silent, both of them silent, because somehow with the AC on it feels more like there might be someone else in the house, someone else to hear them.

“I’m going to put my weight on you,” Andrew whispers against Neil’s mouth. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil breathes, sighing in something like relief when Andrew comes to rest on top of him, a weight pressing him into the bed, an offering, one that Neil knows better than to take for granted. Andrew’s hip rests against Neil’s cock, and the amount of self-control it takes not to _move_ , not to seek out some friction, _something, anything_ , he pulls away to try to catch his breath, trails his mouth over Andrew’s jawbone and down the side of his neck—

“Neck fetish,” Andrew says, voice deep and rough, which almost undoes Neil right then and there.

“The fetish isn’t mine,” Neil says, grinning and finding Andrew’s mouth again. “My fetish,” he says, the next time he needs a moment, “is whatever you like.”

“I would like,” Andrew responds, “for you to shut up.”

“Make me,” Neil challenges, and Andrew does (Neil counts the seconds, ticking by at a quarter the pace of his pulse, in Russian, he’s started learning, Andrew’s started learning ((so much faster than Neil, Andrew’s memory)), so they can have a private language, and Neil thrills a little, a secret, he’s reasonably good at keeping those, and this isn’t a pointy sharp painful secret, this is something bright, a flame in the wind that he wants to shield with his body, he counts in Russian, for him and Andrew, for Neil-and-Andrew, someone said _boyfriends_ the other day and Neil didn’t correct them and neither did Andrew, Neil _wants_ , wants to wrap his legs around Andrew, his arms, wants to wants to wants to, two-hundred-one, two-hundred-two, two-hundred-three, legs stay in place, hands stay in hair, he will not be like them, he will not let Andrew let him be, he will not let _himself_ be, he will not place this burden on Andrew, the burden of holding the _want_ in check, two-hundred-four, two-hundred-five) and, an endless amount of time later, three-hundred-two, Andrew pulls up. Neil whines aloud at that, remembers to be silent, remembers he doesn’t need to, whines “ _Andrew—_ ”

Andrew pauses. Looks at Neil, as he does so often, (Andrew’s memory), (with enough time Neil can reroute some of his old triggers, connect them to new memories, Andrew can never forget but maybe with enough time he can do the same). Andrew bends back down, kisses the corner of Neil’s open mouth, kisses his jaw, his throat, and then moves down, lower, dragging his mouth across sweat-sticky skin, to one scar, to another, Neil’s scattered thoughts can’t hold together long enough to place the scars, to pluck out the memories associated with receiving those scars, not when his whole being is focused on _don’t move_ , “ _Drew_ ,” he grasps at Andrew’s hair just to have something to _do_ while Andrew unzips Neil’s pants, lifts his hips when Andrew tugs, loses his grip on Andrew’s hair when Andrew sits up, grabs at the sheets when the air hits his dick, his legs, a breeze drifting across his sensitive skin as the AC picks up steam, and then— _warmth_.

A warm hand, just the touch of which elicits a groan from Neil, and then Andrew’s mouth, warm, wet, and his _tongue_ , and Neil moans and lets his eyes flutter down to half-mast. Andrew taps Neil’s hand, and Neil moves it from the sheets to Andrew’s hair, careful, careful not to hold too tight, not to pull, not to push, not to _move_ , Andrew’s hand on Neil’s hip, Neil puts his other hand on top of Andrew’s, and Andrew _swallows_ , and every muscle in Neil’s body goes to work keeping him _still_ , holding himself _down_ , six-hundred-thirty-three, six-hundred-thirty-four, inarticulate noises coming out of his mouth, until he gives up. “Andrew— _Drew—_ ” he says, a warning, breathless, and Andrew _hums_.

A moment later, Neil’s vision clears, the ceiling swimming into focus.

He tugs on Andrew’s hand, and Andrew scoots back up and kisses Neil; it doesn't taste great, Neil is happy to kiss that away. Andrew’s hand is moving between them, and Neil knows better to look; instead, he whispers meaningless encouragement into Andrew’s mouth, sometimes into his ear, in English, German, French, whatever comes to mind. When it feels like Andrew’s close, Neil mouths a line down Andrew’s neck—and Andrew goes rigid, his breath hitching.

Neil loosens his arms, wrapped around Andrew’s shoulders, so when Andrew pulls away it’s easy for him to go. Neil slides his legs up and gets out of bed without being told, grabbing his underwear and jeans on his way out and shutting the door behind him. He moves fast—spending the bare minimum amount of time necessary in the bathroom—and then heads downstairs, to the kitchen.

They’d gone grocery shopping, on the way over. Chicken breasts—boneless—because that felt like the start of a meal; spinach, because it felt like a good choice; alfredo sauce, because that felt like it went with chicken and spinach; milk, because the house contains an ever-present box of Lucky Charms; a quart of ice cream, because Andrew; and four oranges, because Andrew had spent five minutes trying and failing not to look at them. It’s the oranges that Neil grabs now, and they’re big—in season, clearly. He starts peeling them, the sticky dust on the peel coating his fingers, the sweet citrus smell floating into the slowly-cooling air.

He’s down to the last half of the second orange when he looks up to find Andrew standing in the doorway. Neil nods to the first orange, already peeled, sitting in a bowl, and Andrew wanders over and peels off a slice.

“Why?” Andrew asks.

“Why what?” Neil asks back, tossing the last of the peel in the trash. He places the second orange in the bowl and goes to wash his hands.

“Do we have these?”

“Bowls? I assume Nicky didn’t want to eat cereal directly off the table.”

He takes the bowl from Andrew and wanders into the living room, grabbing a couple napkins on the way. Maybe they shouldn’t eat something so messy in the living room, but that’s where the TV is.

“Oranges,” Andrew says, following.

Neil shrugs and sits down, tugging the coffee table closer so Andrew’s feet can reach. “It looked like you wanted them. Do you not? I can just eat the second one tomorrow.”

Andrew sits down next to Neil and pulls another slice off his orange. “I didn’t say that.”

“What do you want to watch?”

Andrew sticks his feet up on the coffee table. “What’s on?”

Neil grabs the remote and flicks through the channels. “House Hunters?”

Andrew doesn’t respond, too busy eating his orange, so Neil puts it on.

Andrew _hates_ it.

He won’t let Neil change the channel, though.

He rolls his eyes at every single demand the house-hunting couple has, and looks flatly affronted when their requirements conflict.

“People can’t want different things?” Neil asks.

“If you’re going to get married, you should have that conversation beforehand. If one of you wants to live on the beach and the other wants to live in a desert, your marriage is already over.”

Neil pokes Andrew’s cheek. “Yes or no?”

Andrew looks at him, appraising. “Yes.”

He tastes like summer, like oranges.

And so the day goes.

They watch House Hunters. Mythbusters. They make dinner, by tossing their ingredients in a pan and hoping for the best; it comes out all right, although the sauce is a little burnt. Who knew that cream could burn so _fast_? Not Andrew, who doesn’t seem to care much anyway, and certainly not Neil, whose diet rarely involved _cream_ , which would spoil in a long car ride and was expensive. They sit on the couch, shoulder to shoulder, eating ice cream, as the show they’re watching ends and another begins, because it’s hot, even with the AC on, and the house smells like dust and summer and oranges and alfredo sauce, and moving just feels unnecessary.

And then they go to bed.

Neil wakes up—early, it’s _very_ early, but the sun is sliding through the window and directly into his eyes.

Neil rolls over, lazy, and meets Andrew’s eyes—all different shades of hazel and brown, in the dim sunrise light. He snuggles down, trying to press himself deeper into the mattress. Reaches for Andrew’s hand, finds it, and links their pinkies. Andrew just blinks, lazily.

It’s Sunday. They’ll drive back to Fox Tower tomorrow morning, and they’ll train again, and that’s exciting, Neil loves exy wholeheartedly, right down to his bones, but right now—just for right now—Neil is content to watch Andrew’s eyes drift closed again.

He could do this forever.

His future: exy, training, a new city every week, new faces, new places, and time for a cigarette and a drink and a dinner in between. And this. A weekend, every once in a while. He’ll have a house—even after the Moriyamas take 80% of his salary, he’ll have plenty or money, and he’ll have enough for a house. One without any of his own ghosts in it. One that’s all his—and Andrew’s, if Andrew will accept that, and Neil thinks that maybe he will. One with cats in it. One where his friends can come and stay, but one that they’ll leave. One where he and Andrew won’t reflexively shut the bedroom door, because there’s no need to. One where the two of them can spend quiet, hot summer mornings, and cold, snowy, muffled winter mornings, and all kinds of mornings, and days, and nights, where maybe they can get old, together.

And he decides that he’s done looking for Mary.

Mary knows where to find him. Ichirou knows where to find him. Stuart knows where to find him. He’s not hiding, and he’s not lost. He’s not up for games, either. If anyone wants him, they can come get him.

Just not now. Just not right now.

He lets Mary go, and closes his eyes. It’s not Monday yet, and Andrew’s pinky is hooked around Neil’s, and the sun isn’t even properly up yet, and the fan is brushing a cool breeze across Neil’s exposed scars, and Neil remembers growing up—always in the moment—can’t plan for a future you don’t have, can’t reminisce on a past that’s never far away—and uses it to center himself. He’s here, now, with Andrew. That’s enough.

* * *

And then it’s September. First game of the year, and Neil’s looking forward to an easy win—they’re playing the Terrapins **,** and Neil’s happy to beat them.

The Foxes gather for Wymack’s pre-game talk—Andrew, though, isn’t paying attention. He’s standing at the entrance to the inner ring.

“Is there a problem, Minyard?” Wymack asks, waiting.

Andrew pushes out into the inner ring.

Wymack’s eyebrows go up. “Did I say something wrong?”

Andrew sticks his head back in. “Neil.”

Neil stands, lifts his hands in a shrug at Wymack’s inquisitive look, and goes to stand next to Andrew.

The crowd roars when it sees the two of them, making the hair on Neil’s arms stand on end. He can feel his heart pounding through his chest, his blood rushing in his veins, and he looks at Andrew, but Andrew isn’t looking at him.

He’s not stupid enough to point, so Neil follows his gaze.

It doesn’t take long. She’s not trying to stand out, particularly, but she’s in the front row, and she’s a redhead sitting in a crowd of brunets and blonds.

“Oh.”

She’s cheering, too, along with the rest of the crowd.

Neil turns and walks back inside, Andrew at his back.

Wymack waits, one eyebrow up, for an explanation.

“Mary’s here,” Neil says.

“Who’s that?” asks Jack—one of the new Foxes, and not Neil’s favorite.

“My mom.”

“I thought she was dead?”

Matt waves a hand. “If she points a gun at Dan or steals my truck again, she will be. Sorry,” he adds, glancing at Neil.

“No worries.”

“She stole your truck?”

“Can you play?” Wymack asks, and then immediately waves Neil off. “Never mind. Don’t look so goddamn offended.”

It’s an interesting way to play a game, Neil thinks, when he leaves the court after the first quarter. Knowing his mom is sitting in the stands. Knowing she’s still alive, and not dead, either at Nathan’s hands or at Ichirou’s. Wondering what she’s done, to keep herself alive. Whether it’s with Ichirou’s permission or not. Wondering if it’s odd that he’s only alive because he has another person’s permission to be. Wondering if it’s weird to wonder about that.

Regardless, they win the game, and it’s been months since they last played a real game but it’s a familiar feeling—a familiar run from center court to the party happening in the Foxes’ goal, a familiar apathy from Andrew.

He gets hooked into talking to the press—easy questions, along with a couple jabs— _quite a quiet summer for the Foxes, what was that like?_ —and then he heads back into the locker room, and Mary’s there, waiting for him.

None of the Foxes will look at her.

She seems fine with that.

“Do any of the new kids speak German?” She asks, in German.

Neil shakes his head.

“Lovely. Little Boss said I can keep living.”

“What are you doing for him?”

“What I did for your father.”

Nicky gags.

“Bookkeeping,” Mary says, frowning at him.

“Oh, thank _god_ ,” Nicky says. “ _Je_ sus.”

“That’s disgusting,” Aaron says.

“You’re telling me,” Nicky says with a shudder.

Mary takes a deep breath. “I’ve thought about what you said in May.”

Neil waits. It’s only taken nineteen years, but he’s slowly beginning to develop some of Mary’s patience.

“I have,” she says, her mouth twisting, “with Little Boss’s permission, gotten a therapist.”

Aaron laughs outright.

“What?” Neil wonders, abruptly, if this is a dream.

“And I have been seeing her regularly. And I’ve come to the conclusion that you were correct.”

Neil holds his arm out in Andrew’s direction.

Andrew pinches him.

Nope. Not dreaming.

“Oh.”

“If you are okay with it,” she says stiffly, “I’d like to have dinner with you, sometime. And the boy, I guess.”

Neil looks at the boy in question, who stares back at Neil. After a minute, Neil shrugs and turns back to Mary. “Okay. Where are we going?”

“Is public a good idea?” She asks.

“You can use my house,” Nicky says.

Mary and Neil raise an identical eyebrow.

Nicky shrugs, and gives Neil a small smile. “More of us should have parents, around here. And you’ve got the key already.”

“You have a house?” Mary asks.

“In Columbia.”

“A house, _and_ student loans? Who do you work for?”

“I don’t have student loans, I’m an athlete, and my boyfriend helped me take out the mortgage on the house. I worked at a bar, for a while, and now I work for Kevin, running my poor, perfect body into the ground at his request, for _free_ , which he does not appreciate.”

Kevin looks up at his name, and, hearing Nicky’s tone, responds by flipping him off. Nicky shoots him a toothy grin and a finger wave in return.

Mary looks back at Neil. “Let me know what day works for you.”

“How should I get in contact with you?”

“You could just decide now.”

“Thursday?” Neil looks at Andrew, who shrugs. “Thursday?” He asks again, looking at Mary.

“What’s the address?”

Neil looks around—paper? Pencil?—and then Mary pulls out a phone.

“Text it to me,” she commands.

“Hey!” Nicky says, abruptly offended. “That’s an actual _phone_ , phone!”

Matt looks up, not understanding the German but hearing the tone. He follows Nicky’s gaze to Mary’s hands, and says: “Hey! That’s an actual _phone,_ phone! What the fuck! See, Andrew, _that’s_ what you should’ve gotten Neil.”

Andrew looks endlessly unimpressed.

Neil puts Mary’s phone number into his contact list, feeling odd. She’s dead. Or, she should be, and yet, she is not. And here he is, putting her phone number into his phone, and it’s likely to stay there, likely to stay the same number. It’s under her real name. He texts her Nicky’s address.

She looks at him. “Well. I’ll see you on Thursday.”

“Yeah.”

She steps towards him, and he steps back—a reflex, an instinct, one he intends to hamstring. She stops. “I was going to hug you,” she says.

It’s perfectly silent.

Even the noise outside—people, a whole stadium’s worth of them, leaving—doesn’t seem to penetrate the walls.

“Oh,” Neil says. There’s not much else to say.

“Am I allowed?” Mary asks.

Neil considers this.

Movement makes him glance up—Nicky has his face in his hands.

“Yes,” Neil decides.

He steps into his mom’s arms, and it’s weird.

He’s nineteen, and this is the first time in his memory that his mom has hugged him.

“Good job, by the way,” Mary says, as she steps back. “You play well.”

“I have good teachers,” Neil says, gesturing vaguely. Kevin. Wymack. Dan. Andrew.

“They’re doing their jobs,” she says.

And then she leaves.

No one moves.

Well. That’s not his problem.

He heads into the showers.

He writes his name, once, on the shower wall. It’s not his father’s name. It’s his own name. It’s not the name of an orphan, either.

When he gets out, no one mentions Mary. Wymack looks Neil over, but says nothing.

Neil gets in the car with Andrew.

He contemplates his future, looking for space. Looking for gaps, and for places to make those gaps. Where does Mary fit? Where is he willing to let her? _How_ does he let her?

“I think,” Neil says into the silence of five tired athletes squashed into a Maserati, “I want to talk to Bee.”

The Maserati lists to the right for a second, and then finds the center of the road again.

“I think,” Andrew says, “she has a free slot right before my appointment.”

“No one bet on that,” Aaron says, annoyed.

Neil shrugs. That’s not his problem.

“How many sessions?” Aaron asks. “We can bet on _that_ , anyway. I say one.”

“Five,” Nicky says. “Or more.”

“Twenty bucks,” Aaron says.

“I’m with Aaron,” Kevin says.

Andrew reaches out. Neil offers up his pinky.

“Twenty it is,” Nicky says. “I’ll let the rest of them know.”

Andrew links his pinky with Neil’s.

Even if Andrew doesn’t know it’s a promise, Neil makes one. A wordless promise. He’ll get his future. Even if he has to talk to a fucking therapist, he’ll get his goddamn future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—  
> The size of it made us all laugh.  
> I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—  
> They got quarters and I had a half.
> 
> And that orange, it made me so happy,  
> As ordinary things often do  
> Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.  
> This is peace and contentment. It's new.
> 
> The rest of the day was quite easy.  
> I did all the jobs on my list  
> And enjoyed them and had some time over.  
> I love you. I'm glad I exist.
> 
> -[Wendy Cope](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-orange-7/)


End file.
